Helmholtz Association joins Springer's OA scheme

The Helmholtz Association has signed an agreement for an open-access membership to SpringerOpen. This agreement covers article processing charges for authors from the participating Helmholtz research centres for articles published in SpringerOpen and BioMed Central journals.

SpringerOpen journals are peer-reviewed open-access journals in emerging and interdisciplinary fields. They are electronic-only and publish articles under the Creative Commons Attribution licence. According to this licence, Springer will not reserve any exclusive commercial rights.

The membership option allows institutions to support directly the payment of article-processing charges fees and facilitate the uptake of open access across their authors.

'We feel that the Springer open access journal portfolio is a good match for the spectrum of the six main Helmholtz research areas (Energy, Earth and Environment, Health, Key Technologies, Structure of Matter, and Aeronautics, Space and Transport). We are pleased to enter into this partnership opening new chances to develop an open access forum for research results of our scientists. The agreement is part of our mission to establish long-term mechanisms securing reasonable publication charges for open access journals,' said Bernhard Mittermaier, head of the Central Library of Forschungszentrum Jülich.